Month: September 2015

If you’ve never seen How I Met Your Mother, you should go watch it. Like, ASAP. It made me laugh, made me cry, and made me realize a lot about myself as a person.

For those of you unfamiliar with the show, it centers around a guy named Ted and his interactions with his four best friends. I’m not really good with explaining TV shows, so you should either watch it or Google it for any information beyond that.

Ted is somewhat obsessed with finding his soulmate. He bounces from girl to girl throughout the episodes, sure every time that he has found his future wife. As the show progresses, everyone else is happy and he… isn’t.

I’m afraid that I’m becoming Ted Mosby.

I’m not even twenty and I’m already terrified that I’m just not going to find my person. I feel like I bounce from relationship to relationship because I’m trying to find something perfect that isn’t going to exist for me for a while. And I don’t know how to stop.

Well, kind of. I think I’m going to take a break from dating for a while. I deserve it.

The thing is, these women don’t really change Ted that much. He’s a fully formed person. I’ve changed a lot in a year but it’s not boys that change me. I am myself and I am proud of who I am as a person. I don’t want anyone to change me. I just want someone who compliments me.

I know that this all sounds completely ridiculous because I’m young. But why does it have to? Why can’t I be a career and goal driven woman that also wants to settle down young? Why can’t I want to be happy with someone else? Why does everyone tell me that I’m rushing my life when I already know what I want?

I suppose that I really do sound like Ted Mosby right now, and that he annoys a lot of people. I’m especially frustrated because someone called me a “perpetual girlfriend” the other day and I don’t think that’s a fair term. I choose who I am. I choose who I date. I choose not to do casual hook-ups, but committed relationships. I’m writing my own story – but I don’t want to write alone anymore.

Sorry I’m ranting. I swear that this had a lot more direction when I was writing it in my head. Either way, I’m Ted Mosby right now and I want to be Lily Aldrin. I suppose that I should just be more patient.

Never before have I dropped a class because it was too hard. Never. Until today, that is. That’s right – I’ve admitted defeat. German Writing has gotten the best of me.

So if you haven’t realized yet, I’m a bit of an ambitious freak. I currently have two majors with pre-med dangling on the side, with a potential for a minor/certificate in German. College is hard. In addition to classes I’m in a sorority, a choir, and the band. All of them are in peak season at the moment. I’m not saying that I’m letting my extra-curriculars get the best of me, but there is just a lot going on right now.

That being said, my German professor basically assumed fluency. I’m not fluent in German. I was in the class with my Big. Just an hour ago, we were looking at the syllabus and realized that we still had two hours of homework left and we forgot to turn in an essay today.

Some days are not good days.

We had a long discussion about it. Both of us are not at the level that our professor expects us to be at, and we barely understand anything from the class. The class is graded on participation and quality of written assignments. Writing is my weakest area in German.

Both of us are English majors and there happened to be a Lit class the same time that would fit a requirement. We switched.

I feel slightly guilty for ‘giving up’, but I honestly could not let my GPA suffer right now. It would be far too much effort for me to take that class this semester, especially since I’m currently in three sciences with labs.

This is more of a message to the college students out there: Don’t feel awful if a class is too much. C’s may get degrees, but pride makes you cry. At the end of the day, only you can judge what you are capable of. I couldn’t pretend to be great at German anymore. Does this mean I won’t get my minor? No! I’ll just find a way to do it that works better for me. This is the time to focus on what you love, not scrape by in something that you can sometimes do. I’d much prefer to study German literature or film, because I have the language capacity to understand what other people are trying to say. I’ll save the German writing for the people that can actually do it.

The song is included because it pretty much states how I feel right now. Listen to it while reading for the full effect.

When I started this blog, I promised myself that I would write about difficult topics. Not things that are hard to read, per se, but that are painful for me to write. This is one of those topics that I almost rejected because it was too personal. Then again, “Jellyfish” is a very personal essay as well, so this is fair game.

Besides, writing makes me feel better. I want to write through this.

Break-ups are hard. Even the most insignificant relationship carries emotional value, some more than others. Sometimes a relationship can just feel so right and fall apart in the matter of hours.

Of course, not all break-ups are equal. There’s a defined difference in breaking up with your middle school boyfriend of three weeks and your fiancée of two years. That being said, shorter relationships can carry more value than longer ones.

I know that my relationship with M meant a lot to me. It was my first real adult relationship, you know? We lived away from home, we made our own schedules, we had real-life obligations. He was the first person that made me realize that I really could choose my own path in life.

M and I didn’t break up out of convenience. We tried long distance for months and it just didn’t work. For me, I wanted to preserve the good feelings between us. Above all, I hope that he still knows I am here to support him whenever he needs.

Can a relationship end because of caring too much? I think so. There comes a point where you have to take your well-being into consideration. We were just at different places in our lives. He lives four hundred miles away and being long distance for over a year wasn’t part of our original plan. People change, for better and for worse. That doesn’t make them mean less.

It is bittersweet knowing that we ended the relationship on a good page. On one hand, we ended the relationship and it hurts a lot more than I thought it would. I was prepared for this one. We had discussed it in advance. But that doesn’t make it sting any less that I won’t be flying up the East Coast to see him this fall or watching stupid movies with him over Skype or bragging to my friends about this wonderful person who cares about me just as much as I care about him.

On the other hand, I still have a wonderful person in my life. I don’t have to lose him because we are no longer together. If I feel terrible about classes, I can still text him. I can support him through his own struggles. We will both move on, yet we can stay in each other’s lives.

Do I still think of him romantically? Yes. I miss him all the time. I wish things didn’t have to end this way, that I didn’t have to start all over (Not that I’m dating. Trust me, it’ll be a while.) I’m frustrated because I do care about him still, very much, but there is absolutely nothing I can do about our current situation. So instead of dissolving into constantly arguing about things we couldn’t change, we broke up.

We’re going our separate paths. I hope they cross again someday, but for now I am happy that we can support each other in separation instead of destroying each other through togetherness.